India hosted the second Agriculture Ministerial-level meeting of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) in New Delhi on Thursday. The Agriculture Ministers of Bhutan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Thailand participated in the meeting, which was chaired by Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar.
While addressing the audience through video conference, Tomar urged the member countries to cooperate in developing a comprehensive regional strategy to strengthen cooperation for the transformation of agriculture. Referring to the importance of millet as a nutritious food and the efforts made by India to promote millet and its products during the International Year of Millets - 2023, he urged the member countries to adopt a conducive agricultural food system and a healthy diet for all. He asked participating countries to actively participate in India's initiative to promote millet as a food.
Tomar said that natural and ecological farming should be promoted to conserve agricultural biodiversity and reduce the use of chemicals. Along with digital farming and precision farming, initiatives under the 'One Health' approach are also taking shape in India, he said, as he emphasized the importance of cooperation in agriculture and allied sectors to ensure food security, nutrition, environmental sustainability and livelihood support, for which technical and economic cooperation are needed to deal with the challenges of climate change, agro-biodiversity and microbial preventive resistance.
The Agriculture Minister reiterated Prime Minister Narendra Modi's statement at the 5th BIMSTEC Summit held in Colombo in March 2022, on enhancing regional cooperation between BIMSTEC nations for food security, peace and prosperity in the region. At the same time, he expressed India's commitment to promoting agricultural productivity, food security and nutrition, sustainability, research and development and enhancing cooperation with BIMSTEC in the areas of agri-business, climate change management and digital agriculture.
The 2nd BIMSTEC Agriculture Ministerial Meeting adopted the Action Plan for Strengthening BIMSTEC Agricultural Cooperation (2023-2027). An MoU has been signed between the BIMSTEC Secretariat and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and approval has been given to bring the fisheries and livestock sub-sectors under the Agricultural Working Group.
BIMSTEC member countries appreciated India's efforts to strengthen cooperation in agricultural research and development and for awarding six scholarships each for postgraduate and PhD programmes in agriculture.
The meeting was attended by Kailash Choudhary, the Union Minister of State for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, and Dr Himanshu Pathak, Secretary, Department of Agriculture Research and Education (DARE) and Director General, Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), along with other senior officials of the Ministry.
BIMSTEC was established in 1997. It includes five countries from South Asia — Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka — and two countries from South-East Asia – Myanmar and Thailand.